


Now Gather the Carrion Fowl

by I_Gave_You_Fair_Warning



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Assisted Suicide, Bird Horror, Eaten Alive by Crows, Gen, Horror, Mercy Killing, Russian Translation Available Link Is In Author Note, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-22
Updated: 2017-07-22
Packaged: 2018-12-05 09:43:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,836
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11575491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/I_Gave_You_Fair_Warning/pseuds/I_Gave_You_Fair_Warning
Summary: Obi-Wan's corpse, along with those of the 212th, have been found on a battlefield, but Anakin has not been left without a goodbye.(Ahsoka is never in danger in this story, but it is all about how Obi-Wan died. Classic me. Heavy on anticipation of something awful and the threat is fulfilled. Not marked explicit because while I describe death, it's not hard-core gore... but it may feel like it anyway because of the effort I spent in building dread. You decide if this is a good idea for you.)





	Now Gather the Carrion Fowl

**Author's Note:**

> Link to Russian Translation: [On Ficbook.net](https://ficbook.net/readfic/6611676)
> 
> Thank you to the lovely translator: you took my words and gave them wings to fly in another place. May the Force be with you, always. <3

 

_“Anakin, if you are seeing this... of course you're seeing this. Force,_ think,  _Kenobi. The lightsaber wounds on some of the clones. It's my saber, so in recreating this disaster, don't try to factor in Ventress or Dooku.”_

Obi-Wan looked back over the field, grim exhaustion in his face.  _“Just... far... too many droids. The birds will gather soon. I couldn't leave the wounded to face them.”_

He looked to Cody's comm once again.  _“I don't expect you to understand, Anakin. It's alright. I can't feel your judgment. I cannot protect them. They deserved the gentler end.”_ His gaze searched the skies.  _“Soon I will wish there was someone to do the same for me.”_

 

* * *

Recording a farewell message.

It seemed simple on the face of it.

It had seemed so even as he used the system still strapped to his dead Commander's wrist, since his own was shattered with shards of it buried deep in his forearm.

Now on his knees, he realized he wouldn't be able to stand again, so instead he remained kneeling by Cody and tried to think of what to say.

“I don't want you to think this is your fault. There were more of them than we knew. The intel was wrong. Once it began, there was no leaving. There was nowhere to run.”

Obi-Wan felt the tear slip down his filthy cheek, but he wasn't crying, his breathing hadn't begun to hitch.

He felt grief, yes, but it was somehow hollow and empty.

Like the battlefield around him. Empty, yet full of carnage.

“Tell Rex they fought bravely, died with honor. Not one of his brothers would he be ashamed of.” Obi-Wan's face twisted. “ _Me,_ on the other hand.” Now his voice choked, his shoulders curled forward. “I couldn't get them out. I couldn't save them. I know there's nothing I could have done. There was no way we could have known.” He hung his head, feeling shame and pain wash over him, none of it from his wounds. “Not even the Force warned me.”

 

* * *

 

_He didn't have a bad feeling?_

Anakin tried to keep his tears quiet enough to hear Obi-Wan's low voice.

_“Tell Rex I'm sorry. Tell him— no. I want him to forgive me, but I do not deserve it. I led them here to die. And for some of them,_ I'm  _the one who struck the final blow.”_ Obi-Wan's composure shattered. _“As they looked me in the eye and said they loved me,”_ he sobbed, open-mouthed and past caring about dignity.

It took several moments before he was able to speak again. _“Cody wanted to stay with me. He was willing to face the birds with me, even though he could no longer sit up. I promised him that after— I would take my lightsaber to my heart too.”_

Obi-Wan looked down at his cracked and blood-soaked hilt.  _“I lied.”_ His gaze dragged up until it was piercing Anakin's skull.  _“He believed me. He embraced me. Lay still so I could— he did not resist. And the trust in his eyes—”_

Anakin's soul pleaded with the holo to stop—

_But it didn't stop for him,_ Anakin knew.  _Oh, Obi-Wan, I'm so sorry._

_“Out here, I only have one thing left. I am a Jedi. And I can't— I know it won't change where I go, if it's my saber or the carrion fowl that take me, but I can't. Do you despise me for my cowardice?”_

Anakin thought of what he'd seen avians do to wounded men who could not fight back—  _no, Obi-Wan. Not cowardice. But Force, please tell me you did not choose to suffer so terrible a fate. Please._

 

* * *

 

“I'm a murderer,” Obi-Wan murmured with a low laugh, “yet I cling to suicide not being the Jedi way. As if it makes a difference. As if it could save me. But that's all I have left— and I've said that already. If you're going to leave a farewell message it should be more coherent, shouldn't it.”

He looked out over the field. “I have never felt so alone in all my life. Surrounded here, by those I'll soon rejoin. How can there be such infinite loneliness when I know I'll be with them again soon?”

He looked back to the link. “I'm sorry to leave you. I wanted to see you knight Ahsoka. I— I  _am_ grateful to have knighted you. To have seen you come into your own, to have experienced your friendship. It was very dear to me. And I'm glad not to leave you the way Qui-Gon left me, before you are ready. Because you are ready, Anakin. You'll think you're not. But I've seen you. Seen the great knight and person you've become, seen you raise a child with more wisdom than I gave you. You will be alright. Not immediately. It will take time. But I believe it. I  _know_ it. You will be alright. Hold Ahsoka close. Don't push her away. She is already a remarkable young woman. She will be spectacular, Anakin. You both will.”

Obi-Wan dragged in another lungful of air, but it didn't seem to help. The feeling of a lack of oxygen.

Too dizzy to stay kneeling he sagged forward, planting a hand against the ground. His elbow bent, threatening to give out—

Carrying little desire to faceplant into the dirt churned into mud by blood alone, Obi-Wan re-positioned himself to lie down on his terms. Face still to the link, he curled on his side, the pain of his wounds catching up.

“I need to speak to Satine. Will you do that for me? I— she was right. Satine, you were right. You said those who perpetuate violence end up dying by it, and here I am. But I cannot bring myself to regret it.”

 

* * *

 

_“Thank you, for the strength you've sent me over the years. To know, wherever I went, you were there with me.”_

Anakin's breath caught.  _Yes. Yes, tell her, Obi-Wan, tell her before it's too late—_

_“You completed me. You made my life so much more rich than it would have been had you done the wise thing and refused to navigate something as tricky as love with a Jedi.”_ Obi-Wan smiled through renewed, quiet tears.  _“Goodbye, cyare. Ret'urcye mhi. I know anywhere I go, you'll find me.”_

_Oh, Force,_ Anakin's heart gasped. 

Obi-Wan went still and quiet, eyes closing, and Anakin thought for a moment he'd passed out.

Then his eyelids slowly pulled up again, revealing exhausted gray-blue orbs. _“Anakin—”_

The first insect Anakin had seen buzzed near Obi-Wan's face. A weak hand came up to knock it away.

Anakin could see the effort had taken a lot out of him.

Knowing entered Obi-Wan's eyes, and he tried to lift his hand to shut down the recording.

Anakin's heart leaped in his throat, soul irrationally screaming that as long as the link lasted, Obi-Wan wasn't dead, couldn't die— _Don't cut the link—_ it would make it real, he would have to face the blank wall and the empty agony in his mind where Obi-Wan was supposed to be.

 

* * *

 

Obi-Wan called to the Force to help where his fingers could not, but it hung silent around him. After several moments of struggling, he lay still.

The fly crawled across his forehead, but he couldn't brush it away.

The buzz of them over the corpses hissed loud in his ears, and now he could hear the wind in the wings of the avians moving in.

“Stop watching, Anakin,” Obi-Wan rasped. “Turn it off now. Goodbye, my brother.”

 

* * *

 

Anakin didn't. He held his breath and stayed, unable to look away, barely able to blink when his eyes burned.

He could hear beaks slamming against armor, could hear rustling.

Obi-Wan's expression filled every second deeper with dread. His hand twitched in the direction of a blaster just inches from his fingers, but he couldn't make them move enough to seize it.

_To shoot the birds... or himself?_

Obi-Wan shuddered. “Not how I wanted to go,” he whispered. “Not.”

_To survive a massacre only to be torn apart by battlecrows? No. No one wants that._

“Force grant me courage.”

Five minutes later, Anakin was sure he would not speak again, waiting for death to shred his body.

_Where will they attack? He's wearing thick clothes, and armor—_

Anakin's throat closed. 

_They would have gone for his face first. His eyes. His tongue. His throat._

Tears blurred his vision.  _Dear Force._

A bird stepped into view, white as snow with eyes the color of blood, feet stained by the gore of its meals.

_“I love you, Anakin,”_ Obi-Wan choked.  _“Since I know you will not have done as I asked. When have you ever? I didn't want you to see this, but since you're here, I love you.”_

Anakin keened, low in his throat, left fist crushing his mouth against the  _agony_ of his soul.

And then all was silent except the wet sounds of the bird's attack and Obi-Wan's screams, twisting into broken groans. His efforts to fend off the creature worse than futile, he stopped fighting, his hand stretching toward the comm, toward Anakin—

_“I love you!”_ he cried.

Anakin wasn't sure when he passed. The body was too covered in a writhing mass of avians as more joined the first, their snowy feathers soiled with the life they robbed from him.

 

* * *

 

Anakin hadn't thought he'd be able to face the corpse down in the morgue.

But as the holo cut out, a bird smashing Cody's vambrace against a rock, desperate to get to the flesh underneath, Anakin found himself on his feet and fleeing.

He had to get to him.

_Had_ to.

The Examiner present saw him and gave him the room.

Anakin approached the table, gripped the edge of the sheet and dragged it back.

He found blood-stained bone picked clean, found gouges in that bone from the pummeling force of beaks and the raking of claws.

In a way it was almost comforting.

This wasn't Obi-Wan. It was a shell.

Blue eyes didn't stare up vacantly at him. He could read no expression of peace or torment in muscles that no longer existed.

He couldn't hold his hand, because the delicate finger bones had been lost, either trampled into the mud of the battlefield, or disappeared down an avian's throat.

Numbly he turned away, found Ahsoka standing in the doorway, tears of horror in her eyes.

As he walked from the room, a smaller hand slipped into his, holding tight.

He clung to it in return, wondering vaguely if Obi-Wan had been right.

_Will it be okay someday?_

He didn't know.

_But there are three things I know._

_He's no longer in pain. He's safe, he's free. They can't ever touch him again._

_I'm not alone. Ahsoka won't let me face this alone._

And the last one, as he turned to face a future he couldn't see through the fog of current torment—

_Obi-Wan thought me ready._

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Mando'a Guide:
> 
> Cyare (Pronounced /SHAH-ray/) = Beloved
> 
> Ret'urcye mhi (Pronounced /ray-TOOR-shay-MEE/) = “Maybe we'll meet again.” They use the phrase to say goodbye.


End file.
